Posted on 03/13/2007 12:35:30 PM PDT by truthfinder9
Intelligent Design Scientists Will Showcase Evidence Challenging Evolution at Knoxville Conference
KNOXVILLE – What is intelligent design and what scientific evidence supports it? Why is it so controversial? How does it differ from Darwin’s theory of evolution? Is there a purpose to the universe? What new scientific facts are turning evolutionary theories upside down? This one-day conference will answer these and other intriguing questions.
The emerging scientific theory of intelligent design is a hot topic at universities and research institutions around the world, and is now the focus of a day-long conference called Darwin vs. Design, coming to the Knoxville Convention Center on March 24th.
Join The New York Times bestselling author Lee Strobel and a panel of scientists and experts at the Darwin vs. Design Conference as they explain the evidence for Darwin’s theory of evolution and the emerging scientific theory of intelligent design Saturday, March 24th.
Featured speakers include:
-Lee Strobel, journalist and bestselling author of The Case for a Creator.
-Dr. Stephen Meyer, Director, Center for Science and Culture (CSC) at Discovery Institute, and co-editor of Darwinism, Design, and Public Education
-Dr. Michael Behe, Lehigh University biochemist and author of the bestselling book Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, and CSC senior fellow
-Dr. Jay Richards, co-author of The Privileged Planet, and CSC senior fellow
Attendees will interact with intelligent design scientists and philosophers whose discoveries in cosmology, biology, physics, and DNA present astonishing scientific evidence that is overturning the evolutionary thinking of the past. Conference goers will hear firsthand the astounding implications these discoveries are having on our society, our politics and our culture.
The conference is $55 for General Admission and $5 for Students and teachers (with valid school ID at time of admission). Advance purchase group rates are also available by contacting conferences@discovery.org. Purchase tickets online at www.ticketweb.com (use key word Darwin). For more information visit our website at www.darwinvsdesign.com.
"Evolution can be falsified by finding a fossil that is too evolved for the age of the surrounding rock."
HA! Fossils can be moved to different layers of rock for a thousand reasons. There's no way that finding a fossil that is "too deep" would be considered anything more than a fluke. Much less disproving evolution entirely. Plus, this already happened in many areas and there are plenty of theories about how either the layer dating was wrong or the fossils got pushed around.
"Further finding anything that truly was 'irreducibly complex' would also disprove evolution. Note for something to be 'irreducibly complex' we have to understand it. Because we don't understand something (yet) doesn't make it 'irreducibly complex'."
You can always make up a "just so" story for any structure. Irreducible complexity is a nice idea, but it's no smoking gun for ID.
"Now it's your turn. What would falsify ID? What would falsify YEC?"
First, historical sciences aren't about falsification. Competing theories may survive for hundreds of years before significant evidence disproves them or a "smoking gun" proves them.
YEC has been disproven already, by geology, cosmology, and a hundred other findings. We know the Earth, and the universe is far older than 6,000 years.
ID has a lot going for it to explain why creatures of all types suddenly appear at different times in the fossil record, and it gets by the problematic co-evolution necessary for symbiotic mutualism and the seemingly ever-increasing complexity of the cell. It is becoming more elegant to simply assume an historical ordering force. Evolution already has intelligence colloquially attributed to it by scientists anyway.
"Smoking guns" in historical biology are not easy to come by, since we are not talking about inanimate objects. With a theory as broad as evolution, nothing may be a true smoking gun without more focused predictions.
You may be one of those freaks that wish to believe that, but the evidence doesn't support that conclusion. They were, of course ridiculed by pundits in the MSM, and the political power base has succeded in pushing funding underground, but I know several nuclear engineers that are drawing salaries over $300,000 / year in research in that very field.
Why would that make any difference at all, monkeys came from something which came from something which came from something which came from bacteria. No physical anything about any creature can in any way disprove that we evolved from some monkey. There is no way to disprove it by any current differences. The theory can not be disproven.
Galileo and Copernicus charged the general public for glitzy Power Point displays? LOL
***
Don't be silly. They lived back in the days of DOS.
How does this disprove that we evolved from monkeys?
The theory thrives today with no transitional forms. One can't concretely prove transitional forms or ages either. There is always enough wiggle room to believe as a person wants.
Well, certainly you already know what I'm going to say . . . but if you want to have this debate for the 43,304th time, we certainly can.
Let me try the most basic point: it is observed fact that a bunch of small changes equals a big change. I assume you agree that so-called 'micro-evolution' happens.
So doesn't a large number of small, micro-changes equal a big change?
There is no change to human species such that one can prove that we are evolving in any way.
Finding a common pseudo-gene between humans and old world monkeys that is not shared by gorillas and chimpanzees.
Would only indicate a different path.
Given the alternative is that they were created
There are many predictions which common descent requires a priori that can be tested.
Are there any potential findings that could so disqualify ID? No, because whatever is found, people will just wave their hands and say "goddidit".
Both are religions, both are based on faith and esoteric mumbo jumbo that cannot be proven. I used to believe evolution was my creator, now I believe the bible. That's only a change in faith.
"Intelligent Design Scientists Will Showcase Evidence Challenging Evolution"
If they're "Intelligent Design" scientists, why are they not presenting evidence supporting their "theory" (I'd hardly even credit it with being an hypothesis, personally), rather than evidence challenging evolution? Could it be because The Theory of Natural Selection and other evolutionary theories actually make testable predictions, while Intelligent Design makes none? Pointing at another theory and saying "it doesn't explain this or that" doesn't make that theory wrong, just incomplete.
I've seen this program. Very compelling evidence. Worth the time.
"Finding that the current rate of change of the human genome is too small to account for the magnitude of the differences between humans and chimps since the time of the proposed common ancestor."
What do you think of this then:
“Humans evolved their cognitive abilities not due to a few accidental mutations, but rather from an enormous number of mutations...To accomplish so much in so little evolutionary time—a few tens of millions of years—requires a selective process that is perhaps categorically different from the typical processes of acquiring new biological traits."
"...there may have been thousands of mutations in thousands of genes that contributed to the evolution of the human brain. This “staggering” number of mutations suggests the human lineage was driven by intense selection process."
from: http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/050106/lahn.shtml
You're contradicting yourself. Granting sometimes significant evidence is hard to come by (which is why they look so hard for it). Theories are never proven by 'smoking guns' only supported.
It's always about falsification. You can make predictions about things you haven't seen yet (because you haven't dug their yet in the case of fossils, or because you haven't developed the instrument/method to see the data in the case of cosmology and DNA). When you see those things (e.g. new fossils, DNA sequences or variations in the background radiations) you test your theory, just like any experimental science.
You and I agree YEC has been falsified. What would it take to convince a YECist that it was false? (a boot to the head?)
The 'begging the question' fallacy came in when you said, "There's the observed fact of evolution...".
That begs the question of whether observed facts support evolution.
No, because you didn't say it and missed the point entirely.
But, surely you already know that too.
Intelligent Design is a far cry from Creationism but does give credit where credit is due.
I'm sorry, then I am confused . . . what was the point? I thought I addressed you directly, on topic. I must have missed something?
Gee (1999) was correct about there being fundamental differences in the methodology used by historical and experimental scientists. Experimental scientists focus on a single (sometimes complex) hypothesis, and the main research activity consists in repeatedly bringing about the test conditions specified by the hypothesis, and controlling for extraneous factors that might produce false positives and false negatives. Historical scientists, in contrast, usually concentrate on formulating multiple competing hypotheses about particular past events. Their main research efforts are directed at searching for a smoking gun, a trace that sets apart one hypothesis as providing a better causal explanation (for the observed traces) than do the others.
You were responding to a post about Galileo and Copernicus being attacked by the church for talking about 'observed facts'.
Now Galileo and Copernicus advocated heliocentrism and I asked you what 'observed fact' you were talking about and what is the observation that proves it?
If it's a fact, it must have been proved. If it hasn't been proved, it isn't a fact, but a belief.
We may be opposites re: evolution, but that line did make coffee come out my nose.
Wait, you're arguing with -- heliocentrism?
Nah, not really, right?
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